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1.1.2-Kingedmundsroyalmurder
Brick!club: of budgets, charity, and the politics of frugality So chapter two, as everyone else has mentioned, deals with the way monseigneur l’Eveque de Digne organizes his budget. We’ll get his daily life later so I’ll save speculation of that for when we get there. For now just the money issues. We start with a discussion of the Episcopal Palace of Digne. I’m not sure if we get the information about Henri Puget for the sake of completion or as a contrast to monseigneur Bienvenu. I’m assuming the latter, given that Hugo is fairly committed to painting M. Bienvenu in as good a light as possible. We continue this theme with the bit about the hospital. (I’ve forgotten who it was who talked about M. Bienvenu trolling the hospital director, but I have to agree. He has a good sense of timing and drama, probably honed by his previous life in high society. Though I will point out that the director is the one who keeps volunteering information about the negative conditions in the hospital. I have no doubt that this is a man who has had to argue for funds and knows how to do it. He’s pretty obviously hinting for either money or full on renovation, though he certainly doesn’t expect M. Bienvenu to just flat out give up his house.) Where is Mlle. Baptistine’s money coming from? Did I miss that somewhere? And now we get to the detailing of the Bishop’s budget. And I’m going to commit heresy and bring up the notion of hubris in denial. Yes, he is generous with his money and yes he is to be commended for realizing that he has more than he needs and others have less. But I tend to sympathize with Mme. Magloire here. He is not just living alone and his income has to feed three people rather than just one. She and Mlle. Baptistine are to be commended for managing as well as they do with the income allowed to them (and it’s very clearly them who do the managing: “Et quand un curé de village venait à Digne, M. l’évêque trouvait encore moyen de le traiter, grâce à la sévère économie de madame Magloire et à l’intelligente administration de mademoiselle Baptistine.” (And when a village vicar* came to Digne, the Bishop still found a way to treat him, thanks to Mme. Magloire’s frugality and Mlle. Baptistine’s intelligent administration.)) It kind of reminds me of a discussion I once had about denial and how that’s as much of a way of showing pride as opulence. Had the Bishop stayed in the palace and used the entirety of his income on himself he would be flaunting his material wealth, while living as he does in some ways flaunts his spiritual wealth. I’m not saying that I think this is his reason for doing this — the Bishop I think is a fundamentally good person and he is genuinely horrified by the economic disparity he sees — but I can definitely see some of the people in Digne seeing it this way. (Though the way people respond to his asking for money for a carriage makes me wonder how aware the people in charge are of the way he spends his money.) I also want to point to this passage at the very end of the chapter: “Nous ne prétendons pas que le portrait que nous faisons ici soit vraisemblable; nous nous bornons à dire qu’il est ressemblant.” (We do not hold that the portrait we are making here is true; we say simply that it is similar.) This is going back to Hugo’s habit of pretending that he is not the author but just a narrator. It’s also throwing some of the details we’ve just been given into question. How much of this is the “official” version? I know that later on, when the Bishop confronts the atheist revolutionary, we’ll see his less saintly side but for now I can’t help wondering what we’re not seeing. *I think it would be vicar, but it might just be priest. I’m not very good on religious and historical minutia, alas.